It starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane, and Lenny Bruce is
not afraid, and now the Age
of Empires Blog announces the end of the world as we know it, as Age of
Empires Online has closed its doors for good ending the run for this MMO
version of the strategy series (thanks
Eurogamer). Here's word:

AOEO launched in August of 2011, with its
first two civilizations, the Greeks and Egyptians. Over the years, we added the
Persians, the Celts, the Babylonians and the Norse. We also added new modes like
the Defense of Crete and Skirmish, to provide for multiple styles of play. In
the summer of 2012 we even changed the basic model of the game itself, allowing
players to earn Empire Points and play their way to owning more civilizations
and vanity items, and adding shifting Alliances to give high-level Empires more
reasons to make wars upon each other.

None of this would have been possible, of course, without our friends and
partners at Robot Entertainment and Gas Powered Games. They were the architects
of the ancient world where we fought and played together. We were ambitious and
risky with AOEO in a number of respects; some of these experiments worked, and
some did not. As the saying goes, I do think that we ended up among the stars,
most of the time.

The most thanks, though, belong to you, the players of the game. It has been a
pleasure and an honor serving you all. Thank you for the time you have spent
with us, exploring all these little worlds together and conquering them for the
glory of your Alliance and your Empire. Thank you especially for the times you
spent with each other, in PVP matches, in co-op quests, and in the forums and
the rest of the internet. Thank you for playing.

The only thing that hurts is the loss of brain cells when you consider the wasted bandwidth that your worthless posting steals up. Nice smiley face, it looks like you spend more time picking the 'perfect' smiley face for your nonsensical dribble than you do on even a sliver of thought or contribution.

I wonder if Beagle has started to resort to an Alt account, or maybe he has a fanboyclub with a bunch of 14-year old trolls. Either way, looks more like the PCGamer.com comment section than BN.

I'll save you the trouble

Reply "Yeah, he mad" :o.

My guess was this guy was reegle, but it looks like Blue put the kibosh on that login as well.

The only thing that hurts is the loss of brain cells when you consider the wasted bandwidth that your worthless posting steals up. Nice smiley face, it looks like you spend more time picking the 'perfect' smiley face for your nonsensical dribble than you do on even a sliver of thought or contribution.

I wonder if Beagle has started to resort to an Alt account, or maybe he has a fanboyclub with a bunch of 14-year old trolls. Either way, looks more like the PCGamer.com comment section than BN.

In all seriousness, maybe Micro$haft is kicking each other in the shins after they saw how popular the AoE HD release went on steam, you know, an actual AoE game where I can pick whatever the hell civilization I want to right out of the box, and play whenever I want to, no extra money or grinding required.

Luke wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 12:23:You pay all that money for digital content and for what? When the servers shut off, all your money just went into a black hole.

Just like Star Citizen

Oh great, another one of these creative clowns, a Star Citizen jab in a completely unrelated thread, where have I read this before? It's bad enough you butchered the quote and ate up 3 posts worth of screen real estate let alone the fact you're another boring beagle clone.

Task wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 10:52:I'm curious when a headline will say mech warrior online goes offline, since micro$haft is getting a quick buck from that as well by loaning out the license, it has a smaller or similar population to this game (as in extremely niche)

Not going to happen any time soon. They released the clan mechs a couple of weeks ago. This provides them a massive cash influx that should push it through at least another couple of years.

I think the Clan money influx was a relative thing. Probably a few million dollars. So yeah, lots for an individual, but if you're running a company, not all that much when you're paying @ 50 people's salary. The game still needs something other than FPS shooter. It's not growing, just living on the people that still play it.

Luke wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 12:23:You pay all that money for digital content and for what? When the servers shut off, all your money just went into a black hole.

Just like Star Citizen

Oh great, another one of these creative clowns, a Star Citizen jab in a completely unrelated thread, where have I read this before? It's bad enough you butchered the quote and ate up 3 posts worth of screen real estate let alone the fact you're another boring beagle clone.

Luke wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 12:23:You pay all that money for digital content and for what? When the servers shut off, all your money just went into a black hole.

Just like Star Citizen

Oh great, another one of these creative clowns, a Star Citizen jab in a completely unrelated thread, where have I read this before? It's bad enough you butchered the quote and ate up 3 posts worth of screen real estate let alone the fact you're another boring beagle clone.

AoEO was pretty fun, imo. I played the hell out of the PvE. The PvP didn't interest me much, but I liked getting all the high-end gear for my little computerized armies. I even bought all the expansions. Shame to see it go down.

Xero wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 10:11:There is no laws that exist to prevent a company from selling you something and then taking it away from you without returning your money? That sounds like quite a scheme to be LEGALLY ALLOWED...

Read the EULA of any game you have ever purchased. All of them state that your game is actually a 'service' that the game developer or rather publisher can end at any time that they choose to.

You dont own the game. You enter a contract or licence agreement that allows you to purchase and play the game as long as the publisher feels like allowing you to do so.

How legally binding EULAs really are is a matter that has yet to be put to the test. Judicially speaking of course.

Back in the 80s you used to see promotional bits on VHS tapes that said "Own X movie on VHS!" as a contrast to rentals. I always wanted to copy and sell bootlegs of those so I could go into court and say, 'look, I was publicly told that I owned this by the rights-holder.' lol

This is why I only buy games from gog anymore. Sure, the EULAs are still the same, as are the copyrights, but with all the DRM stripped out there is basically jack and shit that anybody can do to prevent you from using what you bought. The same cannot be said for Steam, and I pity the people who have and will be screwed over by them.

You always wanted to go to court to do something you knew you'd lose and face a heavy fine for?

And can you point out to me 3 examples of a game people owned disappearing? Not online only games, but single player ones. Valve has done it once, for a game that was online only and all the servers were taken down with no hope of user servers popping up.

The odds of a game no longer being playable due to technology moving past it far outweighs the odds of a game no longer being playable because the DRM holder pulls it from your computer.

Xero wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 09:15:So let me get this straight. You purchased all kinds of in-game content and now you can't access it? Am I hearing that correct?

Correct. I didn't play this game, but I had a feeling this would happen when I followed it a while back.

This is a major problem with some F2P games. You pay all that money for digital content and for what? When the servers shut off, all your money just went into a black hole. Its not like it can ever be downloaded again or insstalled from a disk to play some single-player or play with a couple friends with bots or whatever like Age of Empires the originals.

You pay all that money for digital content and for what? When the servers shut off, all your money just went into a black hole.

I enjoyed this game (the PvE), so I'm sad to see it go. Haven't played in a long time though. Was kind of a bitch to get it to load up right what with GfWL. I was going to play yesterday one last time, but couldn't get it to run in the 2 minutes I was interested. Wish they'd convert it over to Steamworks and keep it running using a TF2 model (hats for everyone!).

Task wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 10:52:I'm curious when a headline will say mech warrior online goes offline, since micro$haft is getting a quick buck from that as well by loaning out the license, it has a smaller or similar population to this game (as in extremely niche)

Not going to happen any time soon. They released the clan mechs a couple of weeks ago. This provides them a massive cash influx that should push it through at least another couple of years.

That's what you might think huh, all these f2p's have "cash influxes" and cash grabs. MWO has no dedicated server option, no single player, just grind and grind. When its all gone, its gone, all those dollars spent on some digital thing, gone, poof. A small population in that f2p can not sustain it for long.

Task wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 10:52:I'm curious when a headline will say mech warrior online goes offline, since micro$haft is getting a quick buck from that as well by loaning out the license, it has a smaller or similar population to this game (as in extremely niche)

Not going to happen any time soon. They released the clan mechs a couple of weeks ago. This provides them a massive cash influx that should push it through at least another couple of years.

Xero wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 10:11:There is no laws that exist to prevent a company from selling you something and then taking it away from you without returning your money? That sounds like quite a scheme to be LEGALLY ALLOWED...

Read the EULA of any game you have ever purchased. All of them state that your game is actually a 'service' that the game developer or rather publisher can end at any time that they choose to.

You dont own the game. You enter a contract or licence agreement that allows you to purchase and play the game as long as the publisher feels like allowing you to do so.

How legally binding EULAs really are is a matter that has yet to be put to the test. Judicially speaking of course.

Back in the 80s you used to see promotional bits on VHS tapes that said "Own X movie on VHS!" as a contrast to rentals. I always wanted to copy and sell bootlegs of those so I could go into court and say, 'look, I was publicly told that I owned this by the rights-holder.' lol

This is why I only buy games from gog anymore. Sure, the EULAs are still the same, as are the copyrights, but with all the DRM stripped out there is basically jack and shit that anybody can do to prevent you from using what you bought. The same cannot be said for Steam, and I pity the people who have and will be screwed over by them.

Xero wrote on Jul 2, 2014, 10:11:There is no laws that exist to prevent a company from selling you something and then taking it away from you without returning your money? That sounds like quite a scheme to be LEGALLY ALLOWED...

You do understand that if maintaining online games forever was legally obligated we'd see a huge crash in how many were out there, right?